Abstract Summary
Technical entrepreneurs and startups are reimagining and reinterpreting cities as sites for local wind energy production, distribution, and consumption. They develop small- and medium-scale wind energy technology resembling trees or tulip flowers that can be integrated into building structures, urban public spaces, and infrastructural networks. Not only do they envision new ways of generating wind energy in cities, but they also reimagine how it can be distributed and consumed in urban areas. In this presentation, I demonstrate how such visions of urban wind energy affect the relations between energy systems and urban spaces. Based on an analysis of three innovative urban wind energy projects in European cities (Wind Tree, Flower Turbine, and Power Nest), I show how these technologies and visions about locally produced, distributed, and consumed wind energy around them lead to the emergence of windscapes: specific socio-spatial configurations between urban space and wind energy systems. I argue that these visions result in three different types of windscapes - 1) energy plazas; 2) pop-up energy spots; and 3) energy enclaves. These urban energy spaces are constituted through emerging relations between multiple elements in the urban environment at different sites such as buildings, green public spaces, mobility infrastructures, urban regulations, land property rights, alternative designs of wind turbines, storage devices, energy grids, cables, and meters, as well as practices of energy consumption. As these windscapes acquire a distinct identity, new relationships form between 1) urban governance stakeholders and wind energy infrastructure; 2) urban residents and wind energy flows; and 3) urban dwellers and wind energy technology. The presentation discusses what kind of implications these emerging relationships between actors and elements of windscapes have for urban governance and planning.
